GUEST COLUMN: The Colorado legislature’s attack on democracy
The Colorado General Assembly spent the 2021 legislative session searching for every possible opportunity to undermine TABOR and increase taxes without voter consent. Their attempts—while largely successful—reveal the progressive left’s disdain for democracy.
The headline of a Denver Post editorial board column published Sunday, June 13 proudly exclaimed, “TABOR died and that’s (mostly) a good thing.”
Anyone who read the editorial will find that they utterly failed to make a case against the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. They didn’t even try. Instead, they underscored the pride progressives in this state take in waging war on democracy and the American experiment. That should concern us all.
The Declaration of Independence proclaims that governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Americans spell out and limit those powers in constitutions.
In the most democratic expression of the people’s will possible in our system of government, Coloradans amended their constitution in 1992 by adopting TABOR. To avoid ambiguity, the people said right at the beginning that their purpose was to “reasonably restrain most the growth of government.”
And what is the left’s primary criticism of TABOR? That it restrains government.
This session, the Legislature was wildly successful in freeing themselves of those restraints imposed by the people via our state constitution.
They managed to increase taxes and fees by over $600 million annually without voter consent. While dubiously declaring broad public support, they bent over backwards to avoid voter approval of $5.4 billion in new fees on things like gas and food delivery. They exploited another end-run around TABOR to increase income taxes by $372 million-per-year. And the list goes on.
These are exactly the kinds of measures voters wanted a say on when they passed TABOR.
When the Left attacks TABOR, however, they never defend all the new taxes and fees imposed by side-stepping TABOR. Instead, they feign that the constitutional amendment prevents the state from funding important government functions such as roads and education.
But TABOR doesn’t dictate spending priorities. It restrains taxation and revenue. With it, voters are telling their elected officials, “We elected you to spend the money we give you the way you see fit, but if you want more of our money, you’ll need to ask us first.”
In 2005, the Legislature made the case to voters that the state wasn’t brining in enough money to fund essential government services. In response, voters approved Referendum C.
The measure lifted the TABOR revenue limits for 5 years and then increased them permanently. As a result, the state has brought in $25 billion above the original TABOR caps.
If after Ref C the Legislature still isn’t properly funding essential services, that’s an indictment on them, not on voters or on TABOR. It’s no wonder the state has been unsuccessful in winning approval for tax increases in recent years.
And that’s what the left truly detests about TABOR—the democratic element. They think voters are stupid. They believe they know better how to spend Coloradans’ hard-earned money.
Our nation’s Founders took a very different tone. In 1792, James Madison published a column of his own in the National Gazette, titled, “Who are the best keepers of the people’s liberties?” In it, the “Anti-Republican” represents the person who opposes self-government. Their words could just as well have been spoken by a Colorado Democrat legislator today:
“The people are stupid … They cannot safely trust themselves. When they have established government they should think of nothing but obedience, leaving the care of their liberties to their wiser rulers.”
Madison subsequently condemns anyone holding this view as “a blasphemer of [the people’s] rights and an idolater of tyranny.”
His answer instead is that “the people themselves” are the best keeper of their liberties. “The sacred trust can be no where [sic] so safe as in the hands most interested in preserving it.”
TABOR puts Coloradans’ liberty over their pocketbooks in the hands most interested in preserving it—the people themselves. For that, we should all be grateful.
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